Over seven years into my movie review website and BlacKkKlansman, this is the first Spike Lee-directed movie I’m reviewing. I actually did not realize this until I checked on his category and saw that he wasn’t listed as one of the directors in my categories list. It certainly isn’t because I don’t enjoy a good Spike Lee movie. I think it’s more than of my first 370+ reviews, more than 300 of them have been since 2010. And while Lee has certainly directed many films since 2010, I haven’t heard of nearly any of them. I did see (and enjoy) 2013’s Oldboy and am quite surprised I did not write a review on it. It is a movie that I will go back and watch again and review. But Lee is absolutely better known for the movies he directed over a 15-20 year period, starting with 1989’s Do the Right Thing and ending with 2006’s Inside Man. Shockingly, he does not have a Best Director Academy Award nomination to his credit and only has one real nomination at all (as a screenwriter for Do The Right Thing). While Lee isn’t a Steven Spielberg, he has directed a handful of movies so memorable that people can roll them out of their mouths at a moment’s notice. I mean, come on…in addition to the films mentioned, you’ve got Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, He Got Game, Crooklyn, Clockers, The Original Kings of Comedy, 25th Hour…movie after movie with Rotten Tomato scores well over 65%. These are all movies that everyone should see before they die. I mean, seriously, how does Malcolm X not earn him a Best Director nomination. It is one of the greatest films ever made. Now I’m not going to sit here and say that BlacKkKlansmanis going to earn him that elusive Best Director nomination, but certainly enough of a movie to make Lee relevant again…something, unfortunately outside of sitting courtside of New York Knick basketball games, that he hasn’t been in over a decade.

Ron requests and eventually is granted an assignment in the field. He is sent undercover to a Black Panther meeting where a well-known activist named Stokely Carmichael speaks, trying to radicalize a local college. Detectives Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver – Paterson, Midnight Special) and Jimmy Creek (Michael Buscemi – Blended, Time Out of Mind) are on the opposite end of his wire, gaining intel on whatever Ron can pick up and also rescue him if his cover gets blown. Ron forms an instant attraction to Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier – Spider-Man: Homecoming), head of the Black Student Union…or maybe he’s just using her to gain information. The speech by Carmichael (who is now going by the name Kwame Ture) is impassioned enough to get the impressionable student body to embrace and love their black heritage and not be afraid to try to conform to white people. Ture talks about an impending race war between black people and the white officers who are getting away with killing them on the streets. He mentions arming themselves for the perceived threat.

After it is determined that the department doesn’t perceive the Black Panther meeting didn’t pose any credible threat to increased violence in the Colorado Spring community, Ron is regulated back to the file room. But he has no interest in returning there, knowing that he has the skills to make a great detective. So he takes matters into his own hands, picks up his desk phone, and answers a newspaper advertisement for the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), posing as a white man interested in joining the chapter. Unfortunately, Ron can convince the chapter president Walter Breachway (Ryan Eggold – NBC’s The Blacklist) that he is a racist white Aryan man. Though he messed up by using his real name, he did everything else to perfection, and he is able to set up a meeting with the KKK to infiltrate and expose the organization. The only problem? Well…he’s black. So he teaches Flip, a more seasoned (and white) colleague, all he needs to know for his dangerous meetings with the KKK.

In addition to Breachway, Flip meets others in the local chapter of the KKK, including Felix (Jasper Paakonen – The History Channel’s Vikings), Ivanhoe  (Paul Walter Hauser), and eventually David Duke (Topher Grace – Fox’s That 70’s Show, In Good Company), the leader of the entire organization. The whole time Ron/Flip are gathering intel about future cross burnings and other, more sinister crimes while trying to keep their identities hidden. But even though they do some stupid things, the organization is very good at sniffing out moles, and it sometimes becomes a harrowing experience. Because it’s a true story, we often don’t know what direction things are going. As a result, there is plenty of tension and unpredictability. And Lee makes us care for a great number of the characters in this movie, even making some of those in KKK (specifically Walter) sympathetic.

It’s Lee’s finest work in years. I don’t necessarily like how he linked the movie to events of over 100 years prior as well as 35 years into the future, but I get it. That’s one of his things. It certainly does not take away from the story. In fact, this might be the smoothest storytelling of any movie that he has directed. He saves these two particular series of scenes for the very beginning and very end of the film. You could strip these two scenes out completely, and you would have the same film. While I appreciated what he was trying to do and was particularly glad to see his vision on the events in Charlottesville, Virginia of 2017, for me, I would have rather seen this as a short…completely independent of BlacKkKlansman. For me, it did not take away or add anything to the movie. I appreciated the 1979 story as it was.

The acting was excellent, and what a coming out part for Washington. Look for him to have a long and impactful career, though I don’t necessarily see him as a leading man. He’s brilliant, and I think he’ll be able to supplement actors’ work in movies of a variety of genres. And even though he was the brightest spot in a movie full of bright spots, I envision his career in more of a leading role. So I think he’ll be around for a while. And Driver (while I don’t love all of his films) keeps getting better and better, and his breadth as an actor is pretty darn incredible at such an early stage in his career.

Plot 10/10
Character Development 8.5/10
Character Chemistry 9/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 9/10
Directing 9/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 9/10
Hook and Reel 9/10
Universal Relevance 9.5/10
91%